Natural gas drilling has brought prosperity to Rifle, but some residents wonder how long the boom will last



RIFLE - If this is what Colorado’s new energy economy looks like, Steve Chesley wants no part of it.

“I don’t like what I see with a lot of the growth,” said Chesley, a longtime resident and co-owner of an art shop in the Western Slope town of Rifle. “It’s like here today, gone tomorrow. A lot of the people, I don’t think have a sense of community.”

This is a town that knows plenty about “here today, gone tomorrow.” In 1982, Rifle became an economic wasteland when Exxon shut down a nearby oil shale operation without producing a barrel of oil. Two thousand people lost jobs.

Prosperity has returned to Rifle. Once-shuttered downtown storefronts are occupied, there’s a Wal-Mart in town, unemployment is practically zero and new houses are springing up thanks to a natural gas boom that began in earnest around 2000.

So why aren’t more people here happy about it?

Natural gas may be transforming Rifle’s economy, but it has also placed the town in the middle of a national debate. Federal officials want to open the nearby Roan Plateau to gas drilling, which has drawn an outcry from environmentalists and some in Congress. It’s become a key battleground between the Bush administration, which says such sites are needed to achieve energy independence, and environmentalists who say they should be protected.

In the middle are the people of Rifle, many of whom wonder what happened to their peaceful town. And while some are prospering now, they also wonder how long this boom will last.

A MIXED BLESSING

At night, newcomers crowd into the Sports Corner Saloon, pockets bulging with gas rig money.

“The roughnecks, you can tell as soon as they walk in the door,” bartender Jill Hassig said. “It’s great for business.”

That’s the consensus around town. The last time Rifle saw so much business, Exxon was hiring oil shale workers.

Mayor Keith Lambert realized things were changing in 2001, when merchants complained about the downtown parking problem.

“For 20 years, we didn’t have anybody parking there,” Lambert said. “Now we’ve got too many.”

According to Lambert, the gas boom has brought 2,500 new residents to Rifle since 2000, when its population was 6,700.

Several subdivisions have been built and developers have plans for 4,200 more houses. By 2020, the town’s population is projected to hit 40,000. If Colorado Springs grew at that rate, by 2020 it would be a city of 2.2 million.

Many landowners in the region have profited handsomely from leasing land for drilling, though that too carries a price in noise, dust, odor and other irritants.

The drilling brings in tax money, but it also puts a terrific strain on services. The city is scrambling to hire police officers and firefighters. It has no money for street improvements and needs new wastewater and sewage treatment plants.

Said Lambert, “We’re cobbling together finances as best as we can in order to make it work.”

It’s not just local government struggling. With such an influx of people, housing prices have skyrocketed.

“I was paying $825 a month. Now the cheapest I can find is $1,175,” said Hassig, the bartender.

“My son has been looking for an apartment for months now and he can’t find anything,” said bar customer Tom Green. “Rifle used to be the most inexpensive place to live.”

“If anything becomes available, it’s snapped up just like that,” Lambert said.

Voters just approved a ballot measure eliminating a requirement that police officers live within 25 miles of town.

At the Sports Corner Saloon, one roughneck sitting at the bar said newcomers have the same problems.

“There’s a lot of interest in staying around here,” said Larry Messick, a pipeline contractor who came from Louisiana. “It’s just hard to find anything reasonable to buy.”

He says he’ll stay as long as the work is here and would like to settle down in such a beautiful area, but he also knows how the business works.

“We came up here and the prices went up and they seem to be starving the locals out,” he said. “When the boom shuts down, most of us are going to make it out of here, and where are the locals going to be?”

MORE THAN A LANDMARK

They call this place Little Yosemite — a stunning canyon deep in the heart of the Roan, reached by driving an hour on precarious four-wheel-drive roads and walking another half-hour.

“This is an overlook that’s become famous in this area,” said Clare Bastable, with the Colorado Mountain Club, on a recent tour of the Roan. “And right in the middle of it, there’s a gas well.”

“It’s a little tough to swallow from the most beautiful overlook.”

Garfield County leads the state in drilling permits this year, with 1,582 approved through early September, out of 4,166 statewide.

Energy experts have long known about the natural gas trapped below the Piceance Basin, a geologic formation estimated to hold 100 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, considered one of the greatest troves in the nation.

But it wasn’t until recent years that the industry could tap the gas by hydraulic fracturing — injecting water, sand or chemicals underground to open tight sand formations trapping the gas.

To drill a well, especially in an undeveloped area, is a major endeavor: Roads are built for heavy trucks, which then make an average of 580 round trips per well, hauling in equipment and water. The surface in the vicinity of the well, known as the pad, is bulldozed, and the drilling rig is set up.



Drilling takes place around the clock for about two or three weeks per well, followed by a few days of fracturing. Pipeline is laid to the pad, and the well then produces for 20 to 30 years.

This activity has been taking place on private land on the Roan, including the rig at the mouth of Little Yosemite. But when the U.S. Bureau of Land Management in June proposed opening the public land to drilling, it caused an outcry.

Gov. Bill Ritter has expressed concerns, and several members of Colorado’s congressional delegation oppose the plan, which projects 193 well pads and 1,570 wells over 20 years, including 13 pads and 210 wells on top of the plateau.

Opponents argue that drilling would ruin the wild character of the plateau, a popular hunting and outdoor recreation spot, hurt the economy by driving away visitors and destroy wildlife habitat.

“I don’t think anybody’s arguing the gas shouldn’t be recovered at some point,” said Bastable, of the Colorado Mountain Club. “The argument is when and if the Roan should be leased for surface development on top.”

Jerry Schuh, a hunter from North Dakota, was on the plateau last week to try to bag an elk in a truly wild setting. He and his friends wouldn’t make the trip, he said, if gas production was going on.

“You want the experience. You want to get out and away from it all,” Schuh said. “You don’t want to have traffic blowing by you all day.”

The gas industry, meanwhile, says the BLM plan is designed to minimize the impact on the surface.

“To provide the energy for the U.S. and the services we need, we need to develop what we have here,” said Doug Hock, spokesman for energy giant EnCana, which doesn’t have wells or drilling plans on the Roan but is one of the largest operators in the Rifle area. The company will drill 250 to 300 wells in the Piceance Basin this year.

“It’s not like you’re going to have rigs all over the plateau,” Hock said. “It’s the most restrictive plan the BLM has ever done.”

At the request of Gov. Ritter, the BLM implemented a 120-day review of the drilling plan, which ends in early December.

In Rifle, people are watching the developments closely. The city has passed a resolution opposing drilling atop the plateau.

This is no hotbed of environmentalism — Garfield County backed George Bush in 2004. But the town has a deep association with the Roan, in much the way Colorado Springs identifies itself with Pikes Peak.

In times of boom and bust, the one constant has been the Roan, a wild mecca for hunters, anglers and campers. Tourism has sustained the town through the bad times, and some people wonder if it will need to again some day.

SURVIVOR MENTALITY

Each year, in early May, Dean Hubbell throws a party.

Though it is now officially a Cinco de Mayo celebration, Hubbell said, “The old-timers that show up, we know what it’s for.”

It’s about surviving.

When Hubbell, owner of a title company, moved to Rifle in 1980, there was a sense of vibrance and optimism here.

Oil companies, riding a wave of government subsidies and public yearning for new oil sources — spurred by the Arab oil embargo — promised longterm prosperity for the region with oil shale.

But on May 2, 1982, a day now known as “Black Sunday,” Exxon announced the closure of its Colony Project, putting 2,200 people out of work. Other companies followed suit.

A year later, Hubbell had the first “survivors party.” The invitations read, “Get a load of this Exxon. We’re still here.”

But many found it hard to remain optimistic as businesses were shuttered, entire blocks of houses became vacant, property values plummeted and people left town in droves.

“Within three years, my mortgage was about 40 grand more than my house was worth,” Hubbell said.

“Businesses had a tough go of it in those days,” recalled Lambert, who moved here for a teaching job in 1981.

He said one thing sustained Rifle through these lean years: the Roan.

The fall hunting season was a big time of year for businesses, when the town was “a sea of orange blaze,” he said. He envisions a time when the Roan may again be the backbone of the local economy.

“Anyone who’s around the industry realizes once the production is gone, once they’ve pulled all the gas out of the ground, they’re going to leave,” Lambert said.

Energy industry officials point out the differences between oil shale, a speculative product propped up by government subsidies, and natural gas, which has a proven demand.

“We continue to look for more resources,” said Hock, of EnCana. “We would anticipate we will continue to operate here for a long time.”

The drilling companies provide some of the highest-paying jobs in the region, he said, and are committed to the area. He said EnCana donated $3 million to the new Colorado Mountain College campus, which will offer gas drilling courses, as part of the goal to have a “homegrown work force.”

“There’s definitely a need and a demand for natural gas, and we don’t see that slowing down,” Hock said.

But a contrary view prevails at Miller’s Dry Goods in downtown Rifle, where owner Gary Miller stayed in business after 1982 catering to hunters and now catering to energy workers.

“No one thought it was going to end,” Miller said of the oil shale boom. “It’s the opposite this time. We know it’s going to end.”